HOW TO – Addressing Knee Pain During the Lunge

HOW TO – Addressing Knee Pain During the Lunge

Here’s a video of me addressing a very common and overlooked habit people have when they do their lunges. The lunge is one of the most important movements you can probably master. Main reason being that it replicates many scenarios you would find yourself in life. Whether it’s walking, sprinting, throwing, moving laterally, the lunge is an exercise that prepares you for those situations in reality. With a fitness population so gung ho on staying bilateral in their movement via squats, deadlifts, etc., the lunge is quickly becoming forgotten. There’s no escaping the benefits of the lunge, and it’s a movement that needs to be conditioned into your structure as a human.

If you are a person who gets knee pain when you perform exercises like a squat or a lunge, this is definitely a video to look at. In this video, I show you a feedback system you can institute in this exercise that will reprogram your lunge unconsciously. This technique will balance your movement and take pressure off of the knee joint. If you condition better function during this exercise, it’s quite likely that will have a transfer to your every day life.

Be sure to practice your MFR and basic posture before doing this technique. This kind of mechanical control can only come if you have a good understanding of how to use muscles like your Transverse Abdominis and your Diaphragm. If you are looking at addressing your structural deficiencies at their root, be sure to check out my book “The Power of Posture” (CLICK HERE)

3 Comments

Love this video, Naudi! I’ve been studying your techniques for about 15 months and have been wondering about lunges and what your thoughts were about them. While I was familiar with the anterior pelvic shift that you illustrated in the video, I hadn’t thought about the length of the stride before and how too-long strides go against our natural biological forms. A former long-time trainer with whom I worked (notice the past tense verbs) would always have me reach as far as I could with my lunges – but never really explained why. After I attended your Level I class in 2014, I began focusing on my TVA, gluteus maixmus, and diaphragm, and integrating these into my everyday movements – including this other trainer’s sessions (which I stopped attending last year). For what it’s worth, my balance, coordination, and posture all improved immensely, thanks to you! The other trainer did notice the changes in me, too. Thanks, Naudi, for continuing to educate and guide those of us who wish to continue improving our human functionality!

With this technique, I’m having difficulty with the arthrokinematics of the knee. During knee flexion the femur glides anteriorly on the tibia. Many people have issues with knee flexion and one thing I have found in my practice is to apply posterior translation at the tibia to assist with knee flexion. By placing this anterior tibial translation force, this disrupts the arthrokinematics as well as placing the ACL under more stress. Now I realize in a very controlled environment, especially under direct supervision of a clinician, ACL injury with this exercises is not likely. However if you have your clients attempting this at home without supervision, one valgus movement at the knee with this anterior tibial translation and they are now looking at some extensive rehab. My question, is this the best idea to apply this anterior translation force? is there another way we can go about accomplishing your goal here? Thank you for your time.